This is from a hand posted on the microstakes nl forum here...

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...d.php?t=209965

No one can seem to agree on what the proper action should be. There are pretty reasoned arguments given for simply folding, and also for some that think as played was good, except that maybe the OP should have bet more on the turn.

Here is the hand...

Villain = 28/16 over 68 hands, nothing notable.


Absolute Life Poker 0.25/0.50, hand converted by the iPoker Converter at Talking-Poker

saw flop | saw showdown

Button ($59.25)
SB ($34.85)
BB ($11.63)
UTG Hero ($60.30)
UTG+1 UTG+1 ($77.10)
CO ($39.20)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with Q A
Hero raises to 2.00, UTG+1 calls 2.00, 4 folds.

Flop (4.75) Q 4 7
Hero bets 3.50, UTG+1 raises to 9.00, Hero calls 5.50.

Turn (22.75) 9
Hero bets 15.00

Should hero have folded on the flop? Or should he push on the flop and just get it in? Is it good as played?

No way am I pushing the flop, especially 120 deep.

I think the key part of this hand is that you have the A and with the Q on the board it hugely cuts his flush hands down. Axs would be a decent part of a 28vpips cold calling range, that's obv not there now, KQss you can also discount. So if his range is [bluff, set, flush draw, tricky overpair] you aren't doing that well because the number of hands in the flush draw category is massively reduced. Any kind of top pair hand is going to fold if you 3b.

Post flop stats and recent history would be really helpful here, have you been lagging it up? Does he fold to cbet often? How often would he raise the flop?

Saying all that I don't think I'm ready to fold just yet, I'd need some kind of read first, so I probably call just like you did. By betting the turn you are pretty much telling him what you have and letting him play perfectly vs you. If you are happy putting $15 in then I'd be tempted to c/c and get to see a river card. I don't think he value bets much on the turn that you are ahead of though so c/f is probably better. If the turn checks through and spades whiff you've got a pretty easy b/f on the river, if the spade comes in then I think it's time to c/f.

If you take the line I suggest then you will sometimes let him make his flush, but since we've already discounted the flush hands a bit I'm not quite so worried about that. You lose less vs sets (what do you do if he calls your turn bet and the river bricks? If he does that with a set then you are losing a good size bet on the river too) and still get to see a showdown versus lots of hands you beat.

I agree with pretty much everything hawk said...I actually dont think a flop fold is bad against lots of people, but id want a little better read before I mucked here. If I didnt have the As I might just go ahead and toss it tho and wait till I had a better read or for a better spot, especially given im OOP. I think a shove is absolutely terrible.

One thing i've realized over my first 3k hands of NL is how much more your 'reads' are going to cost you. It's nothing like limit play in this regard. We have 68 hands on this player and I do not believe this is enough history to have any clue about his tendencies to bluff with air against a preflop raiser UTG. I believe my largest leak comes after my c-bets start getting raised up a lot and I start getting antsy about it and play back at them more than I should. Add in a little bit of tilt and I just start making ridiculous decisions. If I were to go through my hands I think it would show i'm losing quite a bit when I make big calls on flops like this one.

But back to the hand... we have the As and one of the Q so hands like KQ/JQ are a bit less likely here, we don't have enough history to give too much weight to his bluffing with complete air. The more likely hands are sets, draws, and pp's like TT's. So we're about 55% to win here against that range of hands. Clearly, going all in on the flop, like Alo put it is absolutely terrible. He is still getting correct odds to call if he has a hand like 5/6 because he's getting 42% equity to call.

Well, if he was bluffing how likely is it he's going to continue to bluff on the turn given that Hero opened UTG and called the flop raise? When you call the flop it makes it less likely that he'll continue to bluff on this turn and really the only thing you're doing is letting him have a free card IF he has the flush. If he raises the turn here I think it's an easy fold. If he calls the turn I think you can fire again if no spade drops.

I'm not raising the flop because if he has a draw he's still getting correct odds to call even if we go all in here, but by calling the flop I feel I have to bet the turn - again, because of the draw possibility. Betting the turn is good but Hero probably should have bet the pot or slightly over. We want him to call the turn without proper odds if he's on a draw. If he raises it's an easy fold. We can't check raise because then we'll be giving him the correct odds to call. Although I guess it's good that we got him to incorrectly bet out on the turn...

The essential question I think is how Aggro are the opponents? Has the avg player evolved to the point where raising C-bets w/ air on these kinds of boards is happening often enough for us to have to take more stands? How much weight can we give to his aggression? I mean, we're 55% to win here given the range we are putting him on... but does his aggression mean that we need to tighten up his range and give him more credit for a big hand? How often do these players even bet their draws?

I think you are way off here. Hands like TT are never raising the flop, especially given they just called pre. You're giving draws a load more weight than I think you should, if he has a draw then betting the turn is good but there is a ton of other stuff that raises the flop and has you crushed. Bet/folding the turn is beyond horrible since you'll already have half your stack in, and now you're saying you should maybe have bet even more? I would only lead this flop if I was bet / getting it in.

If he has a draw it's only getting there 25% of the time which isn't really enough to worry me when we are oop and better hands make up more of his range. If he gets there and we have to fold, so be it. What do you do if he calls and the draw gets there? You are oop so c/f is pretty much your only option and that really sucks. If the draw misses are you stacking off? If so then you're going to start losing money quickly because people generally aren't stacking off with less than AQ here.

This is a good example of why being in position is so important in this game.